Petrarch's Love for Laura: Compare to Qu Yuan's Vanilla Beauty

Abstract

The "Love for Laura" condensed in Petrarch's Canzoniere is a rare story in the history of literature, and to his lifelong love "Laura", whom he could not love, it is worthwhile to explore the spiritual implication under it; similarly, in the history of classical Chinese literature, there are a large number of literati who share the same ideal bitterness with him, represented by Qu Yuan. Qu Yuan's use of "Vanilla Beauty (vanilla represents all fragrant herbs and flowers)", which was to express his political bitterness and personal feelings, is a precedent of a cultural tradition. The purpose of this paper is to deeply interpret Petrarch's "Love for Laura" and Qu Yuan's "Vanilla Beauty" as ideal archetypes and to analyse and compare them from a comparative literary perspective. Laura is a kind of deified imagery, and "Vanilla Beauty" is also a symbol, a collection of characteristics; but "Vanilla Beauty" in the history of classical Chinese literature opened up a precedent for literati to use things to symbolise their dreams of returning to politics and to a certain extent opened up a tradition of literature. There are certainly similarities between them, but they are fundamentally different because of the differences in social systems and cultural traditions.